It might be over two months since the curtain came down on Knowledge14 but it's the conference that just keeps on giving. As with Knowledge13, KPMG, a global business services firm, and ServiceNow conducted a survey of event attendees.
Last year the survey related to the use of IT service management (ITSM) outside of IT — something that has gained a lot of traction in the last 12 months. This year's survey drilled deeper into how organizations are looking to drive enterprise efficiency by automating the business services provided by other corporate service providers such as facilities, HR, finance, and legal.
Of the 275 IT Professionals surveyed at Knowledge14:
- 93% say the role of IT is changing from being an administrator of infrastructure to a driver of enterprise services.
- 90% think service automation should replace email.
- 98% believe the IT Service Model can improve HR, facilities, and other service departments.
- 56% see HR as the best starting point for IT to drive service transformation.
- 56% have firm plans to roll out enterprise service management.
Intriguingly, I'm about to mention "meat lovers"
While it's not surprising that a high number of those surveyed planned to use service automation outside of IT — after all, if you asked people at a meat lovers' conference if they like meat you would get a positive response — the magnitude of the numbers is interesting.
As are a couple of figures that don't make the headlines:
- A small number or respondents (2%) stated that less than 25% of their business processes rely on email. But 25%, at the extreme, of processes is still a heavy reliance on something not designed for managing service delivery.
- After HR as a starting point, circa 23% chose facilities and 13% purchasing departments. It makes you wonder why the ability to efficiently manage service requests and service delivery has been omitted from so many line-of-business applications.
In terms of the latter bullet, we're saying that HR needs help but how many HR systems of tools do they currently have? I'd imagine many HR organizations already have multiple systems or tools for:
- Storing employee data — the HR management information system
- Payroll
- Benefits administration
- Time and attendance
- Absence management
- Performance appraisal
- Recruitment
- Training or learning
- Performance history
- Analytics
But then again how many systems and tools does your average IT organization employ? I'm on a very sticky wicket here, so I'll move on.
A final observation
33% of respondents will roll out enterprise service management within the next six months and 22% next year (making up the earlier-quoted 55% statistic). This is compared to the 98% who think that the IT Service Model can improve HR, facilities, and other service departments. So where are the other 43%? It's a big difference.
It makes one wonder why. Possible causes could be one or more of:
- The respondents might have an adoption timeframe beyond 2015.
- The respondents might not want to go "full-on enterprise service management" and instead restrict it to a limited number of business functions.
- The respondents might not view extending the IT Service Model to other departments as "enterprise service management" (or the term might not be fully understood).
- A lack of financial resources — the usual suspect.
- An inability to see a swift and painless transition, or some other form of resistance to change.
- Perceived resistance to change by the other lines-of-business — "we think it's a great idea but the people we want to help won't."
- An inability to rise above the intensity of day-to-day IT operations to offer up the means to deliver greater business efficiencies.
I'm sure there are many more you can think of but I personally think, however many there are, it's worth looking beyond the big numbers to better understand why we have the gap between: "it's the right thing to do" and actually doing it.
How often do we see this in IT? We could create a list, and problem management would probably be near the top of mine.
Finally, you can read more opinion on the survey via the following links:
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